Built to Last : 100+ Year-Old Hotels in New York

by Turkel, Stanley, Cmhs

• ISBN13: 9781463443429
• ISBN10: 1463443420
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2011-10-18
• Publisher: Textstream

Excerpts

Plaza Hotel (1907): New York's Most Celebrated Symbol of Turn-of-the-Century Splendor Originally constructed between 1905 and 1907, the Plaza Hotel is set back from Fifth Avenue and is prominently located near Grand Army Plaza and the Pulitzer Memorial Fountain. The 1969 New York Landmarks Designation Report said, "By day, the impressive white mass of the Plaza Hotel is visible above the trees in Central Park. By night, the lighted windows and the picturesque silhouette of the high roofs, reminiscent of a French Renaissance Chateau, add a note of beauty to the skyline... the building occupies one of the finest sites in the City and is the most elegant of our great New York hotels.... The boldness of mass and good scale of this eighteen story white brick and marble structure make the Plaza the outstanding example of American hotel architecture of the first decade of the Twentieth Century." Eve Brown, in her book, The Plaza, Its Life and Times, says, "From the cotillion to the bunny hug, to the Charleston, to the frug; from diademed dowager to dancing deb; from Lillian Russell to Eloise; from Elinor Glyn to Eleanor Roosevelt; from Groucho to Gromyko; from Billie Burke to Brigitte Bardot; from Caruso to Ringo; from High Society to Hollywood - through all phases of transition, the Plaza has always managed to be in tune with the times, its dignity unruffled, its good taste unimpaired."